


Tearing Down the Walls

by fuzzybooks



Series: Stilinski Family Feels [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mentioned Car Accident, Mentions Mama Stilinski's death, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 23:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzybooks/pseuds/fuzzybooks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles receives some unwanted news from Derek and copes badly. John comes home to find his son drunk and talking about werewolves and keeping his loved ones safe.</p><p>Or where it had all piled up and Stiles finally cracked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tearing Down the Walls

“Scott’s a werewolf. There, I said it, you wanted to know why I’ve been so secretive, because you don’t understand! I just wanted to keep you safe! Keep him safe! There’s hunters and fucking lizards that aren’t lizards because they’re Jackson and everything just keeps going wrong! I can’t do this anymore, I can’t! First mom and then Scott’s in danger and what if you died that night? I just. I can’t lose you too, it’s all my fault.”

John Stilinski came home early from his late shift, his deputy sent him off since she knew what day it was. He wasn’t expecting to come home to hear his son yelling about.. werewolves? At the mention on his wife, John froze. He closed the door and headed to the living room, not sure in what state he would find his son.

“He’s a werewolf and now there’s a pack of werewolves and the whole fucking town is just a beacon, get it?, for a supernatural shitfest.” Stiles was pacing, unsteadily, around the room, not unlike how he normally would when talking about whatever he was thinking. ‘But apparently not everything he was thinking.’ John sighed.

“Stiles. Stiles, sit down on the couch.” He stepped forward to guide Stiles to the couch when Stiles finally looked at realized that he had an observer. His eyes were rather glazed and he had clearly been drinking more than his fair share. John looked over and saw the familiar bottle of Jack Daniels on the table.

“Dad! Hey dad. What’re you. You’re, uh, home early. You’re never home early. Not today. You’re always gone.”

John winced, the statement rang frightfully true. Every year on his wife’s birthday he would go to work and put in near 24 hours before going home and locking himself in his room. Maybe it was time for the Stilinski family to start coping. He let out another sigh and finally managed to get Stiles onto the couch.

“Shannon told me to go home, said it was time I ‘man up’. I guess I haven’t been doing a great job of that lately.” He sat down next to Stiles and ran his hands through his hair. “I know, we don’t talk about a lot of things that maybe we should have. I just always thought you knew you could come to me if it was important. I guess I was wrong.” John looked at Stiles, his cheek still hadn’t healed from whoever attacked him after the lacrosse championship, he lacked his usual color, he felt dimmed. No longer the vibrant, excitable boy that John knew.

Stiles kept talking all the while, but John couldn’t completely focus, just kept hearing him say that it was his fault and this crushing wave of guilt swept over him. He remember how he could barely look at Stiles after the accident, he just kept seeing him and his mother covered in blood, with limbs at unnatural angles. Kept seeing his wife, turned into some kind of vegetable until her body finally shut down.  
Had he ever reassured Stiles that it wasn’t his fault? That it was an accident?  
By now Stiles was quiet, and still, more so than John was used to seeing.

“Stiles, what do you mean it was your fault? It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.” John knew that asking and prying while his son was intoxicated was skirting the line of ethics, but he clearly wasn’t up for talking about it sober, and as a parent, shouldn’t he know?

Stiles looked up from his hands and gazed vaguely in John’s direction.  
“I talk too much, I distracted her, if I hadn’t, she would’ve noticed the water on the road! She could’ve gotten out of the way! We wouldn’t have hit the tree and she wouldn’t, she would still be...” Stiles hiccupped and trailed off, his voice coming down from a near hysterical tone, tears flowing freely.

John looked at Stiles, anguished. ‘How did I not see this?’ He gathered Stiles up in his arms, awkwardly.  
“Stiles, listen to me. Your mother, it was an accident. It wasn’t your fault. It was not your fault” He started rocking them while Stiles kept sobbing.  
Eventually the sobbing subsided and sleep claimed them both out of utter exhaustion.

  
When John woke he had a crick in his neck and the sun was shining brightly in through the windows. The clock on the wall said it was 2pm. He blinked a few more times, and lifted his sons heavy weight off him. He covered Stiles with a blanket and went to the kitchen to start making coffee, he figured that for the coming conversation, they were going to need it.

While he was waiting for Stiles to wake up, he figured he might as well make breakfast, they hadn’t had a family breakfast in a very long time. There was always other things to be done, and John had never really pushed his son to talk to him. Clearly that had been a mistake.  
He had been overwhelmed when he lost his wife, left with a son on medication who always got in so much trouble. John assumed that’s why he didn’t notice how that trouble now apparently involved werewolves if Stiles’ drunken rambling was in fact true.  
He mixed together the pancake batter quickly, trying to let it relax him but not quite succeeding.  
  
  
*  
“What are you doing here?” Derek asked, he was standing with his arms crossed by the entrance of the subway station that the pack was still using as headquarters. Stiles jumped out of his trusty, relatively, old jeep and started walking towards him.

  
“Uh, there was some kind of super important information to be shared? Scott told me.” At this Dereks scowl deepened.

  
“Yes, there’s important information to be shared with pack and other werewolves in town, not with some hanger-on human. So I’ll repeat, what are you doing here?” Stiles looked at him, and took in Dereks posture.

“Well, I figured if there was something so important that you’d invite Scott, I should know, since, believe it not buddy, he’s not the brains in this operation, you know?” Stiles tried to make a joke out of it but Derek did not seem in the mood for jokes, in fact, he was looking pretty pissed off.

“You aren’t welcome here, you’re not pack, you’re not a werewolf. You’re a liability and a threat. Stay away. Away from the pack, away from Scott.” Stiles gaped at him, outraged, before regaining his ability to speak.

“What the hell man! I’m the one that’s been keeping you bastards alive! And what do you mean ‘stay away from Scott’? You don’t decide who I socialize with, and besides he’s only alive because I’ve been here to help train him”

“And if you want to keep it that way, you better stay away from Scott and from the pack, Stiles.”

And with that Derek stalked off into the station.  
Stiled made to follow him, what the hell does he know?, but the image of Scott dying left him frozen.  
  
*  
‘pack of alphas cmng y u no at meeting’  
Stiles looked at his phone, a pack of alphas? That’s what Derek called a meeting for? And decided that Stiles couldn’t hear, because Stiles is a liability. A threat. Who the hell gave him the right. Sure, fine, Derek has trust issues the size of the Great Wall of China but hadn’t Stiles proved, over and over, that he was trustworthy? Who the hell threaded water for two hours(!) to keep Derek alive?

After Derek left, Stiles went back into his car and start driving. He didn’t go home immediately, didn’t want to be at home today, that’s why he had been at Scott’s when he got the message. It was his mom’s birthday today. There would have been a small celebration, she never liked making a fuss, but there’d be breakfast in bed, and the special cake from the bakery that she loved but never wanted to indulge in personally. A lot of the memories were hazy, but he remembered how his dad would always try to cook dinner for her and it would almost always go wrong and she would just laugh and take over. She would have been 40 today. If it weren’t for Stiles. He just had to show her what he’d made at school, because it was for dad’s birthday.

He didn’t remember a lot, just the screaming, the pain. They said it was the shock. Made him talk to a therapist.  
Scott was there for it all, even when he didn’t speak for days. Especially when he didn’t speak. Scott was a constant when his dad wasn’t.

Stiles couldn’t deal with this shit anymore, if Derek honest-to-God thought Scott’s survivability depended on Stiles leaving him alone, then what else could he do? He could research for when they finally realised that Stiles wasn’t the problem and needed to come to him for help, but what if that was too late? There were so many ‘what ifs’ and Stiles couldn’t cope.  
He turned the car around and headed home.  
  
*  
Stiles woke up feeling like a herd of elephants had stampeded over his head. He groaned and tried to roll over onto his side and block out the sunlight streaming in through his window. Which didn’t make sense, because his room only got evening sun. He wiggled a little and realized he was lying on the couch. ‘Man, what did we do last night? Scott said he had ice cream, it’s not like him to lace it with anything.’ And then he realized that it was his couch and not Scott’s, meaning he was at home. And he smelled pancakes? Scott never tried to cook if he had Stiles in the house.  
That’s when it started coming back to him. The pack meeting, that he wasn’t allowed to go to, the threats, the trip down memory lane, straight to the bottom of a bottle.

“Oh, shit.”

Stiles tried to sit up, slowly and looked around. The bottle was gone from the table, and his dad’s jacket was hanging on the recliner, instead of on the coat rack in the hallway. He walked into the kitchen and found his dad sitting at the table with two plates of still-warm pancakes, two slices of bacon on each plate and some scrambled eggs. His dad was staring blankly ahead, barely even noticing his entering the room. Eventually though he looked at Stiles and motioned for him to sit. Stiles sat down, saw the aspirin and lukewarm glass of water and smiled hesitantly in thanks.  
  
John sighed. They had started eating but it was clear that Stiles was not going to be the one to start this conversation and John just did not know where to start. Should he start with his mother and the accident? Or with this supposed belief in werewolves. He supposed that werewolves might be the safer option, might as well leave the even heavier talks until after they had both gotten some rest.  
  
“So, son. Tell me. Werewolves?”  
  
He tried to keep his voice even and raised an eyebrow at his son. If it wasn’t in the middle of such a morose mood, Stiles’ face would have been comical. He had a very expressive face, something John had been thankful for on occasion.  
  
Stiles looked like he was going to protest, but clearly changed his mind. He shook his head and straightened his back and looked his father in the eyes and said:  
  
“Dad. Werewolves are real. I know that sounds crazy, but they’re real, and Scott was bitten and there’s hunters and crazy-ass shit going on and I’m sorry I lied to you.”  
Stiles paused, biting his lip, unsure if he should continue. “I, dad. I didn’t want to lose you. I thought it would go over, when we found the alpha and then things just kept getting worse and I didn’t think you’d believe me and I thought that if you knew you might be a target.”  
  
Stiles looked down again, shoulders hunching, fiddling with his fork. John looked at his son, he could see the effort it took to admit all of this and realized that this information, keeping it from him had clearly been weighing him down for months. His son had been thinking that he was one wrong sentence away from being rejected and branded a lunatic.  
  
“Stiles. I believe you, but how about you tell me about it from the beginning?”  
  
Stiles looked up at him, mouth agape, those were clearly not the words he had been expected, which made John wince internally. Then he started talking. About looking for Laura Hale’s body, Scott being bitten, the back and forth opinion of Derek Hale. Stiles talked and talked and John tried not to interrupt, but couldn’t help asking for clarification when some of the things mentioned involved his cases. He found out the reason behind the act that earned him a restraining order, and what had truly happened the night of the lacrosse championship. Stiles tried to downplay that part, but John wasn’t having it. Then he came to the previous day. How he had been told by Derek Hale to stay away from his best friend of a decade, because sticking around would be the death of him. How he was worried that Scott and the pack wouldn’t be able to manage without him, but at the same time feeling that he was useless and unwanted, all he was good for was research, but nobody ever really listened to it when it mattered.  
  
John tried to take it in, wondering how he had missed all of this. He went over to Stiles and pulled him up into a hug, absorbing the fact that he had been so close to losing him, so very many times without being aware of it at all, and then complained about him not doing his homework properly.  
  
*  
Over the next week John and Stiles gave each other some space to think, to gather their thoughts while still being there for each other. After a few days John mentioned that he had some contacts and friends in Florida. The end of the school year was coming up and while the Beacon Hills police department had suffered major losses, family had to come first.  
  
Stiles was hesitant, was he really ready to leave it all behind? The memory of his mother, Scott, the pack?  
  
John and Stiles had their bags packed by the time graduation rolled around, and they didn’t look back.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if there's any mistakes I should correct. 
> 
> This will be a part of the series, their decision will be explained in a companion piece and there will probably be a third story set from Scott/The Pack's pov.


End file.
